


Sin Against Ourselves

by DameGrise



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: F/M, No Sex, Past Relationship(s), Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-23
Updated: 2011-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:58:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameGrise/pseuds/DameGrise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the Rose Prince fell, it took a number of years before he truly became End of the World. Now that they are safely ensconced at Ohtori, the past comes calling and Akio and Anthy have to face it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sin Against Ourselves

**Author's Note:**

> To tell the truth, this story did not work. I still have that glimmering in the back of my mind of what I was trying to show, and this doesn't do it. It's too crude, or something. It was not favorably received by my beta reader or the prompt community it was written for, but there wasn't much to do with it on a deadline. I do intend someday to revisit this idea of the time between when Dios fell and Akio is lording it over Ohtori Academy. There are snatches in here that hint of what I really wanted to say, which is why I'm preserving it anyway.
> 
> Also, if you're a big fan of Utena herself, she's barely in this, which is why she isn't listed as a character.
> 
> Also, I hate the title.

One day the acting chairman of Ohtori Academy received a letter, followed by a phone call. As far as Utena knew, this was the first time Akio and Anthy took a trip. With some concern for her well-being, they advised her that she should stay in the regular campus dormitories while they were gone.

“Stay with Wakaba. She’d like the company,” Anthy suggested, her smile blankly cheerful.

“We have to hurry,” was all Akio added after that. “Our plane leaves soon.”

If there was any significance in the hand squeeze Anthy gave her before she left, Utena couldn’t guess it, even though she felt as if Anthy had squeezed her heart instead. She could only watch them drive away in Akio’s red car. His hair streamed back in the wind of their speed, but Anthy’s was too tightly curled to be caught in the breeze. Soon they were out of sight.

 

When their plane landed in Germany, Akio wouldn’t admit that he was tired and thirsty. Anthy kept close to his side, warily watching the strangers going about their own business in the crowded Munich airport. Her short schoolgirl dress and bare legs drew stares, but that wasn’t what bothered her.

“Why are you so jumpy?” Akio asked her, his voice low and cold. He wasn’t concerned; he only wanted to hear what she had to say for herself.

“I’ve never been here before,” she answered, stepping behind him deftly to avoid being touched by a businessman who pressed too close as he passed by them.

“Of course you have. We’ve been everywhere. This is Munich.” The city was only an hour or so from their final destination.

“This wasn’t here then,” Anthy insisted. For once, her voice betrayed a trace of irritation. She couldn’t move away from her brother in this crowd, so she snapped instead. Behind her glasses, her green eyes darkened in fear. She didn’t like crowds in general, and Akio knew it. He knew why, too.

“You’ll recognize where we’re going.”

“No matter what he says, I’m not staying with him.”

“I doubt you’ll need to.”

 

He rented a car, a sporty red one, even though it wasn’t a convertible. Then he drove through Munich, slowly so that he could navigate from a distant memory. He left Anthy to feed pigeons in a mostly deserted park—it was the middle of a weekday and not particularly warm and inviting to tourists. He’d noticed her eyes following the birds and knew that no matter how angry she was with him or uncomfortable, her compassion for the hungry birds would distract her. At a nearby bank, Akio traded a wallet full of yen for a smaller number of Deutsche Mark. He also asked about the location of an upscale clothing store.

At the shop, Anthy was reluctant to try on the clothes. She planted her feet, stubbornly resembling her friend Utena for a moment, and wouldn’t go into the dressing room. Something about the buying of new clothes felt ominous to her. The bewildered shop ladies let her brother handle it.

"Why do I need new clothes? I'm not staying."

"Your devotion is touching."

"I can't leave. You know that." She tilted her head to let the glass of her spectacles flash opaque at him. But he knew her trick and snatched them from her head. He folded them and put them in his shirt pocket.

"You won't need these here." Anthy blinked and dropped her chin. Akio took advantage of her sudden vulnerability and thrust a dress into her hands. "Get changed," he insisted. "We have to get your hair done."

This time she didn't question him or resist.

 

When Akio parked the rental car outside an inn in Rosenheim, he looked tired as well. The drive hadn't been much further, but it had taken them a few hours to complete the business in Munich before leaving the city. Even though they'd flown westwards, and it was earlier seeming in the day than their bodies told them, they'd been traveling for most of a day. Anthy had napped in the back of the car while Akio drove all the way.

They had no luggage. Akio had traded his red shirt and stylish trousers for a blocky, dark businessman's suit. It had been hard to find one on the rack for his tall frame. He let his hair loose down his back. Anthy wore a bottle green wool suit with a full skirt past her knees. Her hair was down as well, the natural curls caught in a bow the same green as the suit. She wore gloves and seemed calmer than at the airport, perhaps even resigned.

In their room, Akio took off his jacket and sat on the bed to use the phone. Anthy stood apart, like a forgotten doll, except for her small frown as she thought. She waited until Akio hung up the phone to speak.

"You can't just turn the calendar back like this."

"I've pretended to be Dios before." Years before, when they’d first visited the area.

 

The last time they'd been here, he had no longer been Dios but he hadn't been pretending either when he'd used the name. For some time, he'd continued trying to be the prince, every failure chipping away at his delusion. Then, Anthy was wiser in her knowledge of what had happened to them and had tried to protect him. At first it was all she could do to shield him from knowing her pain. She seemed grim, often silent, but as if she were the elder, she distracted the angry people and helped her brother escape after his failures. She was a witch, after all.

By the time they'd arrived in old Bavaria in their travels, a few things had become clear. They were getting older--Anthy's body had matured to almost the full bloom of young womanhood, and the failed prince was taller than ever, with broad shoulders. Anthy had learned to master her pain, and he'd grown tired of his failures to be a prince. The compassion had been leeched from his eyes leaving only frozen green glass. So he decided it was time to make a change, one he could choose for himself.

 

In the present, they slept until morning. Then they met the man who’d called them here from another continent for breakfast. When they’d met him the first time, he'd been known as a wizard. Certainly no one alive in the town now could remember his youth. He was a large man with a bushy, white mustache and sausage fingers who liked brightly patterned waistcoats. When he joined the siblings at their table, the contrast with their slender, youthful and soberly dressed selves was remarkable. Their waitress wondered if old Karl was after another child bride.

Akio ate two plates of pastries with black coffee. Anthy had only tea with sugar. Karl ordered sausages and potatoes. The men ate while the witch kept watch.

"I didn't think you'd come," Karl told them. He addressed Akio, but his eyes, brown and half-hidden under his brows, kept straying to Anthy. She sipped her tea and pretended not to notice.

"You threatened us. Why wouldn't we come?"

"I noticed you changed your name."

"What of it?" Akio had forgotten how keen a mind Karl had. It irritated him not to have remembered. Karl wouldn't have missed how Akio answered the phone the phone in his office at Ohtori Academy. Akio didn’t bother to ask how Karl had found the number.

"Whatever you're doing in Japan is important enough to change your name, and you didn't want me ruining it, but you both had time to come?" The old wizard sounded amazed.

Anthy set her cup down. Akio glanced at her before asking, "What do you want?"

"I want it back."

"If you haven't died by now, I don't think you will." Akio shrugged.

"Did you find her a new husband? I've noticed you're both exactly the same as when I knew you."

"Not exactly."

"You haven't aged."

"I'll give you that, but that was our bargain. Anthy married you for the secret of eternal youth."

"Then you both left me." Finally, Karl showed the anger that had been behind his call to them in the first place.

Anthy seemed frozen in her chair, her eyes on Karl. Akio leaned toward the man. "She's a witch. You don't want to be married to a witch."

"You told me she was a princess."

"He did not," Anthy said, speaking up for the first time. She still seemed half-carved out of stone, poised and alert for danger. "He told you that all girls are princesses."

And because Anthy would never say it herself, Akio repeated it for her. "Anthy isn't a girl. She's a witch."

"She's hardly a girl anymore anyway," Karl growled.

"Can we discuss this outside?" Akio asked, seemingly abruptly. He stood and offered money to their surprised waitress for their meals. Then he pulled Anthy to her feet and left the building. Karl had no choice but to follow them.

 

Akio pulled Anthy along with him to a nearby park. Before Karl caught up they seemed to argue, Anthy glaring up at her brother. Karl could not hear their words if there were any. He thought he could guess.

Then Anthy dropped her chin, lowering her eyes almost demurely as Karl arrived. Akio seemed composed again, he couldn't keep his loose hair from blowing into his face as the wind sported with it.

"If you'd stayed..." Karl began.

"If we'd done as you planned, you and she would still be young and me dead," Akio said. "You lied to us."

Karl didn't shuffle his feet, but he did seem uncomfortable to be called out so blatantly. "Let me have her once more. Just once."

Anthy shook her head and moved behind Akio's bulk. Karl spit at her. "Who are you to deny me the very gift I gave you, witch?"

"I should be thanking you," Akio said. "You did give us the means to stay young forever." He spoke distantly, his eyes on the treetops. “I offered you a fair bargain. That's the kind of man I was."

"And now what are you? I only gave it to her, and there was only one way she could share it with you." Karl wasn't trying to bluster now. He knew he was right, but he could already tell that neither of them would be suitably horrified. He argued as if he thought they didn't have the power to deny him.

Even protected by her brother, Anthy turned away, faint color in her cheeks. Akio was silent a long minute. When Akio finally spoke, he went straight for his point. "As I said, I should thank you. It was your little trick that let me realize who I am now. Who I had been already although I didn't know it. Dios was dead a long time before I met you. I just didn't know."

Despite the cold way they were treating him, united in this as much as they had been those long years ago, Karl still didn’t seem to understand his failure. Shaking his head, he asked in a bewildered voice, sounding like an old man for the first time, “Who are you?”

“End of the World."


End file.
